


The Big Wheel Keeps on Turning

by phoebesmum



Category: Sports Night
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-23
Updated: 2009-11-23
Packaged: 2017-10-03 15:27:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoebesmum/pseuds/phoebesmum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Calvin Trager has a brilliant idea, Casey and Dan are underwhelmed, Jeremy saves the day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Big Wheel Keeps on Turning

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Ngaio, Christmas 2006.

"Meet the new boss," Dan says, wryly, "same as the old boss." And he sighs, deeply and with bitterness.

He's being a little unfair. This excursion is the first time Calvin Trager's stuck a figurative finger into the metaphorical _Sports Night_ pie – if _Sports Night_ could ever be said to resemble anything so organised as a pie; even after all the years' practice they've had, it's still more in the nature of a hurriedly thrown-together ragoût. And if it _were_ a pie, the crust would be flaky.

Given the way things have gone, it'll also be the last time.

It hadn't seemed like such a bad idea at first. Not a great one, but not the worst ever. ('Worst ever' was widely believed to be the time Natalie had sent Peter Lasker and Paul Schapp to Alberta to cover what she inaccurately referred to as the curling brush-off. CSC's viewing figures had slumped to an all-time low while, simultaneously, the home improvement channel's had suddenly spiked. It was rumoured that the audience had actually turned over in hopes of finding paint to watch dry.) What happened was this: Calvin had been schmoozing some glitzy media shindig, which was one of the perks of being a multimillionaire venture capitalist or whatever he was, and had snapped up the rights to broadcast a celebrity poker game set aboard a restored Mississippi paddle steamer. Well. 'Snapped' was a relative term. It wasn't as though there'd been much in the way of competition. But Calvin, so he'd told Isaac, had a feeling that celebrity poker was going to be the next big thing, and he wanted QVN to get in on the ground floor. It could go out as a Christmas special, Calvin said.

"Because nothing better celebrates the birth of our Lord and Saviour than a bunch of B-list celebrities drinking and gambling," had been Casey's comment, when he'd first heard about it.

Isaac, at the time, had just said, "H'm." It was what he generally said when faced with anyone else's good idea. Mostly it meant he hoped they'd go away and forget about it, but Calvin didn't know that, and what he didn't know would hurt nobody and keep them all employed.

"What's our competition?" Dana had asked at the rundown. "If nobody's laying carpet or making cheese, we ought to be fine."

Isaac had just waved a hand. "We can make it work. Send Dan and Casey – "

"_What?_" Dan had yelped, just as Casey had said, horrified, "_Both_ of us?!"

" – the regular audience'll tune in just to see them." And, when Dana had looked dubious, Isaac had reminded her of the time that her anchor team had spent 20 minutes of the show reading out Bridge scores without a single blip in the ratings. "Calvin showed me the preliminary list of players. There're some names there. We'll get some interviews in the can, make some contacts." He'd shrugged. "The network stays happy, and it's not like it'll kill us."

"Remember what Isaac said?" Dan says now. "How this wouldn't kill us?"

"Well," Casey says, and picks up the ice bucket, "technically, he wasn't wrong." He removes the wet cloth from across Dan's eyes, and heads out to the ice machine for a fresh supply.

The problems had started … actually, right after that run-down meeting, when Dan had balked at going to Mississippi. "No good can come of it," he'd said darkly. It had turned out that this wasn't an irrational prejudice; it dated back to the Civil Rights movement, and a family friend who had lost his life working for the ACLU. That had been years before Dan was born or even thought of, but it cast a long shadow.

"Things have changed," Dana had assured him.

"So I should hope," Dan muttered.

"Just remember, be _careful_, and watch what you say. They have guns there," she added warningly, then, realising that that was hardly helping her case, "Not that people don't have them here – " No, now she was just digging herself in deeper.

"Not anyone _I_ know," Dan said firmly.

"Um …" Dana said. "As a matter of fact …"

None of this had made Dan any more happy, but he had, reluctantly, allowed himself to be convinced.

Then there had been the boat. That should have been fine. Dan loved sailing, had his own tiny boat that he took out every chance he got. Casey had never been persuaded to set foot on the thing, which was about the same size and shape as a clamshell, but he'd watched from the safety of the shore and might, if pressed, grudgingly admit that Dan seemed to know what he was doing. But they'd barely stepped aboard the riverboat – had been there just long enough for Jeremy, who'd been drafted against his will into producing the segment, to wander off, investigate, return and inform anyone who cared (which was no-one) that it was a replica, not a restoration – when Dan began to turn white, then, more alarmingly, faintly green, and had to bolt for the privacy of their cabin.

Casey didn't understand. He'd sat himself down on the end of his bed, listened to the unfortunate sounds emanating from the bathroom, and puzzled. When Dan finally emerged, whiter than ever, he'd had to ask.

"I didn't think you got seasick - ?"

Dan, now slumped flat-out on his own bed, had opened a bloodshot eye to glare in Casey's general direction. "I don't."

"In fact," Casey had continued, "you're widely acknowledged to be the show's resident expert on water sports."

Dan winced. "Yes, and can you please never say that anyplace Kim can hear you?" He struggled up to rest on his elbows. "If we were actually on the sea, there wouldn't be a problem."

"Huh," Casey said. Surely the Mississippi River should be big enough for anyone? "You make a distinction between large bodies of water?"

"I make a distinction between 'boat' and 'trashy tourist attraction'." Dan let his head flop back onto the pillow. "I feel like an extra in the video for _Karma Chameleon_," he added, entirely at random.

"You really don't have fond memories of the '80s, do you?" Casey mused. He'd heard this sort of thing before.

"I was in grade school in the '80s," Dan reminded him. "MTV wasn't a major influence on me at that time." He closed his eyes, shutting Casey out. "It's a toy boat," he said, tiredly.

"Danny, it could swallow that thing you sail, like, twenty times over!"

"So could Jaws, and I wouldn't trust that, either." Dan made a face. "I have no faith in it. And it _stinks_." Which, Casey had to admit, was true; whatever was fuelling the steam engine had to be contravening at least a dozen ecological ordinances. "This will end badly," Dan predicted, and he pulled the covers up over his head.

Casey had left him to mope.

They'd had a couple of hours to prepare; plenty of time for Dan to recover. He'd emerged from the cabin in good time to put in an appearance at the pre-game soirée (did people really still have soirées? Casey wondered. On reflection, Calvin quite possibly did. That was how they'd ended up here in the first place), looking only very slightly worn around the edges, dressed to kill and wearing a determined game face. They'd headed for the deck and found the bar; Casey had asked for a martini, Dan had stuck to water. They'd turned back to the crowd, drawn breath, and girded themselves to mingle.

Dan was swallowed up by the throng almost immediately. From somewhere in the distance, Casey heard his voice saying, "… sport of kings," and wondered if Dan was ever going to figure out that the sport of kings was, in fact, tennis. Not that that meant that kings were prohibited from playing poker. Although there needed to be limitations on the ante, if that were the case, or they could end up like his local Chinese restaurant, which had changed hands as the stake in a Mah-Jongg game three times in the course of the past two years.

At which point, Casey felt a weight on his shoulder, and turned to look up. And up.

Casey was tall, but power forward Jayson Grissom was taller. And _big_. And pissed-off. And, even this early in the evening, apparently very, very drunk.

"Hey," he said, "Hey, McCall. Hear you've been sayin' some things about me."

Casey had tried to pass it off. "I read the sports news, Jayson, I say things about a lot of people."

Grissom's forehead had creased. "You think you're so clever – " Which, Casey had to admit, was true – he _knew_ he was pretty clever, Phi Beta Kappa, after all – but that didn't seem the time to get into it, because something was coming toward him fast, and, if asked, he would have to say that it was kind of a blur, but probably it was Jayson Grissom's fist, and he tried to duck out of the way, but his reflexes had seized up a lot since his gymnast days and he wasn't going to make it, except that something cannoned into him right at the last possible moment and shoved him aside, and he staggered a bit, but he was fine, thanks to –

Thanks to Danny, of course. But Danny was lying on the floor with blood pouring from his nose and saying "Fuck!" loudly and repeatedly, if not very clearly.

Casey said, "Oh," in a small voice, and looked around worriedly. Jayson Grissom was being held back by two or three men almost as large as himself, while a much smaller man – Casey recognised the team's manager – yelled up into his face. So _that_ was okay.

What wasn't okay was that someone was going to need a trip to the ER. The show was going to be short an anchor. And both those somebodies ought to have been him, not Danny.

This was not going to make Dan love Mississippi any the more.

So a skeleton _Sports Night_ crew piled into the hire car and hustled Dan down to the nearest hospital, where he quietly and resignedly signed autographs while he waited for someone to tell him his nose was broken, which he already knew, and to re-set it. "It'll be good as new!" the intern assured him, sickeningly cheerful, and then, looking sidelong at Dan's profile, "… maybe even better." Dan was not amused.

There was no time to get in a co-anchor, even if there'd been anyone in the vicinity. Allyson took one look at Dan and turned almost as pale as he was. "He has a black _eye!_" she announced to the world.

"He's sitting right here," Dan pointed out, irritably. "And he can hear you. Don't bother to cover it up," he added. "I'll go onscreen like this. Let Jayson Grissom's lawyers talk him out of _that_."

Casey rested a hand on his arm. "You sure?"

Dan shrugged. Cautiously; he'd jarred his shoulder when he fell, and it hurt like crazy. He was keeping quiet about that. One trip to the ER in a night was plenty. "What the hell. I was a hero. People might as well know it."

What there was also no time to do was to get in a new player to sub for Grissom. That was going to lead to a whole slew of problems for the stagehands: re-setting, re-lighting …

Dan smiled evilly. It was the first time Casey had seen him anything but morose for days.

"Let Jeremy play," he suggested.

The producer looked at him askance. "Your AP? He's not – "

"I know he's not a celebrity, but you people owe us a favour," Casey snapped. He had no idea what Danny had in mind, but he'd go along with it.

Jeremy was less sure. "Play poker? On TV?!"

"Forget about the TV," Dan told him. "Just play poker."

So Jeremy did. And, after a couple of initial bad hands, he got over his nervousness and got into the game.

He cleaned out the house.

"Not bad," Dan approved, once it was over. Jeremy hunched a shoulder, mildly embarrassed.

"Pity it wasn't real money," he said, trying to sound offhand. Casey sympathised. It'd been for charity, and the money was going where it was needed … but, for a man on Jeremy's salary, it was a little harder to see it go than it might have been for the other players.

"You get your appearance fee," Casey told him. They'd called Dana back in New York, and she'd been on the phone for most of the show, negotiating. "They didn't agree to much …"

"… but probably enough for an engagement ring," Dan added, casually. "If you were in the market for something like that."

Natalie had been pretty mad at Jeremy for abandoning her at Christmas. It seemed unfair that she'd taken it out on Jeremy, not Dana, whose decision it had been, but hardly unexpected. Jeremy himself had taken it all philosophically.

"Her Mom wears reindeer antlers when she cooks the dinner," he'd told Dan, wearily resigned. "And then they go to Mass."

"Still no dancing?" Dan had asked.

"I don't think that's going to change any time soon, Dan," Jeremy had said.

"You guys want to come help me pick something out?" Jeremy asks now, from the doorway. Dan looks up and shakes his head carefully from side to side, and Casey crosses over to pat Jeremy on the back.

"You'll know the right thing when you see it," he tells him. That was just about the one thing he'd done well, in all his years with Lisa. "You'll be fine."

Jeremy looks doubtful, but says, "Okay," and heads off. Casey turns back, and goes to perch on the edge of Dan's bed.

"You've been pretty quiet this evening," he observes.

"Yes," Dan says, dryly. "I have a concussion, Casey."

"M'm," Casey says. "This hasn't been that good a trip for you has it?"

"Not great," Dan agrees. "No."

Casey leans forward, touches a fingertip gently to the bandage across the bridge of Dan's nose. "My hero," he says, softly. "Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?"

Dan turns his head to look at him and, for the first time in the whole trip, smiles his own familiar, real, genuine, 100-watt, happy smile.

"Well," he says, thoughtfully, "you owe me something for dragging me down here – "

Casey protests. "That wasn't me!"

"And for putting my life in danger …" But he's still smiling as he lifts an arm and lets it drape, comfortable and lazy, around Casey's neck. Casey grins back at him.

"What about that concussion?"

"You'll need to keep me awake tonight," Dan says, wide-eyed, innocent. "Got any ideas?"

Casey cocks his head to the side and pretends to think. "I'll work on it," he says, "if you help me out."

"I think that can be arranged." Dan lets his arm drop and settles himself more comfortably. "Lock the door?"

Casey does.

***


End file.
